From the category archives:
Michigan’s Colonial Michilimackinac on Mackinac Island is a preserved fur-trading village representing 1770s life. There is much to see, including demonstrations of open hearth cooking.
Navarre-Anderson Trading Post is another 1700s fur-trading post museum which contains the oldest surviving wooden residential building in Michigan — and an 1810 cookhouse!
You will find 3 kitchen displays and a moonshine still at The McCreary Museum in Kentucky representing different eras. One kitchen represents 1790, another circa 1900, and lastly, a 1920s Miner’s kitchen. Is that a plastic tablecloth in the picture?
Another moonshine still is displayed in Kentucky at Barthell Coal Mining Camp.
Note the kitchen wallpaper at Granny’s house.
Historic New England posted 9 historic New England kitchens as part of their celebration of the Year of the Kitchen. Their traveling exhibition “America’s Kitchens” opens at the museum at New Hampshire Historical Society in Concord, NH.
A 200-Year-Old Tour of Gastronomic Paris
By Tony Perrottet Published: November 22, 2009
A food-obsessed traveler uses the Zagat guide of the Napoleonic era to explore the culinary wonders of this city in the 21st century.
On the Historic Trail of a Parisian Gourmand
Ed Alcock for The New York Times Published: 2009-11-22
A culinary guide to the City of Light through a 19th-century foodie
A 200-Year-Old Tour of Gastronomic Paris
Published: November 22, 2009
A Revolutionary-era gourmand financed his appetites by writing about them.
In the 1780s Oliver Evans of Delaware invented a grist mill design that was more efficient. Before this, grist mills hadn’t changed their design since the Middle Ages. He was the 3rd person to be granted a patent by the newly opened American Patent Office. Out of necessity in the 1790s many grist mill owners switched to Evan’s grist mill design to stay competitive in the marketplace.
His design included a hopper to process and dry grain, automated conveyances, and other updates.
By the 1830s mills were powered by steam engines, and no longer had to be located on a river to generate power.
source:
Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, by Andrew F. Smith, 2009
The Young Mill-Wright and Miller’s Guide, by Oliver Evans, 1795
